Thursday, May 17, 2007

Shining a Light on the Denialists

One of the coolest new blogs out there is denialism blog. There is a certain kind of alternative to thinking that we have to deal with, the CRC's answer to reason, which is not unique to the CRC, but is demonstrated in many, uh, "conservative" groups. The denialism blog addresses this alt.cognition directly.

Today's post is titled: "Who are the denialists? (Part II)."

I'm going to let them do all the work -- here's that post in its entirety:

What kind of family value is lying? That's the foremost question in my mind when I consider the family values organizations that use false research, lies and denialism to justify their agenda of disparaging contraception, sex education, homosexuality, and exaggerating the dangers of abortion.

In light of Falwell's death, I thought it would be appropriate to advance the discussion of the use of denialist techniques to reinforce bigotry and an anti-feminist agenda in the name of family values.

I think a good starting point for the discussion of what a family values denialist looks like is Paul Cameron and his organization the Family Research Institute which has stooped as low as using memoirs of Nazi Rudolf Hoss to justify their theory of gay "recruitment". Paul Cameron can only be described as a disgraced psychologist, the American Psychological Association has even taken the trouble to cancel his membership for violations of their code of ethics and the American Sociological Association followed suit. The Southern Poverty Law Center recently detailed his psuedoscientific crusade against gays. Cameron is a quack, who lies, cheats and misrepresents the science of others to try to prove that homosexuals have higher fatality rates and are more likely to abuse children in an attempt to scientifically justify homophobia. One of his only redeeming values is that he has no idea when he's being made fun of, so every time the Daily Show needs to make someone look like an ass on gay issues they just call him up and he willingly embarrasses himself on national television. Here at scienceblogs, Ed Brayton has chronicledseveralinstances of Cameron's bigotry masquerading as science. Off the scienceblogs, the best resource is by far Box Turtle Bulletin which provides this list of people who promote Cameron's bogus research and lies. Not surprisingly, those that use Cameron's obviously bogus research are other denialist "family" organizations.

In this category I also include the fake feminist organizations such as the Independent Women's Forum and Concerned Women for America, who also routinely lie about sexuality, contraception, sex ed, etc., to advance a religious/political agenda under a pretense of representing women or feminism.

Be sure to check out "Ab is for Abstinence-only Sex Education Science." The Bush Administration has decided to abandoned tracking outcome measures such as charting the birth rate of female program participants or STD rates of all participants to assess whether abstinence-only education programs are effective or not. In place of such established measures, the Bush administration has required the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) to track only participants’ program attendance and attitudes, measures designed to obscure the lack of efficacy of abstinence-only programs.

Robert, here's one way to answer your question. Charmagne is a monkey-monk at the Family Research Council. If you look at Jim Burroway's list HERE of people who cite and enable Cameron, you'll see the Family Research Council listed. So ... she's got a powerful position in a Cameron-enabling organization, and I don't hear her voice speaking out against him.

Jim, Mr. Yoest missed the fact that the misspelling of his wife's name and failure to refer to her as "Dr." were both the writing of her colleague at the University of Virginia, Mark Hoofnagle. How did Mr. Yoest miss that? He still doesn't seem to have noticed, because he hasn't commented on the Denialism Blog to which you so clearly linked.Wasn't he reading? Do you think he gets up in the morning and googles himself and spouse and we just happened to come up at the top of the page?

Why go after someone who is using a verbatim quote and ignore the originator?

And where in the text you quoted is the FRC referred to as a 501(C)(4) organization?

Yeah, Tish, the whole ego-surf-plus-drive-by-comment thing seems sort of self-explanatory, doesn't it? I wondered the same thing, does he get up every day and search for his name and then try to salvage his and his wife's reputations? I'm glad I'm busier than that.

Anon, you have more patience than I do, if you can hear what these people are saying. If they are saying some outrageous things about sex and sexuality, then I doubt that "the TTF crowd is just FINE with this." Most of us are rather conservative in our private lives, and have no desire to shock or to violate norms of what is considered good behavior.

This technique of smearing us with something that happened in -- where? -- Boulder, I guess, from the file name, is not going to be successful on our own turf. Whatever is on these sound files, we didn't say it, and we aren't responsible for it.

It's a big world out there, Anon, and it is not true that everybody who disagrees with you is in full agreement about everything. I would say "nice try," but your comment wasn't even that, it was a weak try, and did not make you look superior.

There's always a risk when public school systems invite outside speakers to address students, especially on the topic of sexuality. It is fortunate that the Conference on World Affairs speakers didn't expose Boulder High School students to each others germs the way the Rockville Crisis Pregnancy Center did to MCPS students.